Managing Customers

Good marketers are constantly gathering information about their customers in an effort to better serve them and, most importantly, to retain them as loyal customers. In recent years a number of techniques have emerged that are designed to: 1) improve the relationship between the marketer and its current and potential customers, and 2) utilize these relationships to not only build stronger ties with existing satisfied customer but also to use existing customers to help locate new customers. These tools and methods for managing customers attempt to identify and target customers right down to the very narrowest of levels - the individual customer. In this way marketers attempt to gain intimate understanding of their customers and satisfy their individual needs. The idea of this section is to provide links to resources that assist with micro-marketing (i.e., individual customers) activities, help with establishing a line of communication with the customer in a way that makes it appear to be special or personalized for each customer and use this customer base to help identify new customers.

Area Coverage:

• learn the basics of CRM including the key terms and concepts
• offer coverage of customer value and its role in building a loyal customers base
• see how customer-facing technologies such as call centers and kiosks are extending the reach of customer management activities
• understand the important concepts associated with targeting markets
• learn the basics of database marketing including the key terms and concepts
• read about the important areas of data warehousing and data mining and see how marketers have put these to use to improve customer relations and increase revenue